Visual Press Bias in a Multi-Party Electoral Context
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VISUAL PRESS BIAS IN A MULTI-PARTY ELECTORAL CONTEXT EMBARGOED UNTIL 6PM WEDNESDAY 17 FEBRUARY 2016 CLAIRE ROBINSON MASSEY UNIVERSITY NEW ZEALAND 17 February 2016 [email protected] Clairerobinsonnz.com @spinprofessor designdemocracy.ac.nz Claire Robinson Visual Bias in a Multi-party Electoral Context 1 Introduction News value and balance make for uncomfortable partners in political news reporting. It is the objectivity norm, an intrinsic element of informational journalism (Schudson 2001), that leads to the expectation that the news media should present a neutral and unbiased account of all sides of a political conflict or issue. The requirement for balance becomes particularly salient in elections, when many citizens look to the news media to assist them arrive at, confirm or change a voting decision. The news media has a consequent responsibility to voters, political parties and candidates to present as balanced and fair a picture of the electoral landscape as possible. At a practical level, however, a tension exists between the requirement for balance and the news values or factors that determine what will or will not be firstly selected for investigation and secondly published as news. News values are a system of criteria central to the journalistic decision-making process, and are usually based upon the media’s expert knowledge of the types of stories their audiences are interested in. In the context of political news, factors like incumbency, lead in opinion polls and likelihood of re-election are valued as newsworthy and consequently drive the most coverage (Caple and Bednarek 2013; Green-Pedersen et al. 2015; Hopmann et al. 2012a, b; van Dalen 2012; Waldman and Devitt 1998). This tends to benefit incumbents, an advantage confirmed in studies in a number of different countries which have found that government parties and their leaders get more media coverage than opposition parties and leaders, an effect strengthened when an incumbent’s re-election chances are strong (Green-Pedersen et al. 2015; Hopmann et al. 2012a; Tresch 2009). This slant in media attention towards the incumbent on the basis of their newsworthiness is referred to as a structural bias (Hopmann et al. 2012a; van Dalen 2012). This is semantically distinct from partisan bias, which is an individual journalist or news organisation’s ideological preference for one party or leader over another. In reality, justification of bias on the basis of news value rather than partisanship is unlikely to satisfy opposition political parties and their supporters at election times, however, should they find their ability to participate in a fair contest compromised and their visibility minimised by the news media’s effective facilitation of an incumbent’s campaign. Structural bias may cause particular difficulties for smaller parties in multi-party electoral contests or multi-candidate contests like US primaries. Multi-party or candidate electoral contests are contexts where it can reasonably be argued that smaller parties or less high profile candidates have alternative perspectives that are deserving of media coverage (Perloff 2014). Yet Claire Robinson Visual Bias in a Multi-party Electoral Context 2 because they are in a less powerful position they tend to have fewer resources to promote their platforms and find it hard to attract the same levels of media attention as the more established parties or high profile candidates. The ‘mere exposure’ psychological effect, by which people’s preference for a stimulus is increased by repeated exposure to it (Kahneman 2011), helps us understand why those parties and candidates who are out of sight and not top of mind when voters are making decisions are at a distinct disadvantage compared to those who are highly visible in the news (Iyengar and Kinder 1987, Hopmann et al. 2011, Jenkins 1999). In political systems with two dominating political parties or candidates the most common definition of balance is ‘equal treatment’ in news coverage of both. For media reports to be considered unbiased it is generally expected that over a period of time there should be as many overtly opinionated statements about one side as the other (D’Alessio and Allen 2000; Jenkins 1999). Equal treatment is harder to achieve in a multi-party electoral context. As Hopmann et al. (2012a) point out: Requiring equal amounts of media coverage for each political party would ignore the differences between parties that have different electoral sizes and play different roles within a political system. Allocating equal amounts of media coverage to all parties ignores these differences. Hence the question is how political balance in news coverage can be defined in countries with complex party systems (p. 4). Until now this question has been discussed primarily in European electoral contexts (see van Dalen 2012, Green-Pedersen et al. 2015, Hopmann et al. 2011, 2012a, b, Tresch 2009, for example). If we are to have a have a more comprehensive understanding of this issue it is important to add perspectives from other multi- party electoral contexts. This study makes a contribution from the antipodes, using the 2014 New Zealand general election as a case study. New Zealand replaced its First-Past-the-Post (FPP) electoral system with a Mixed-Member-Proportional (MMP) system in 1996 to promote greater fairness between political parties and provide more effective representation of minority parties. Until 1996 the FPP electoral system had been characterised by single party governments led by one of two major parties (Labour or National). Small parties stood candidates in electorates, with minimal success.In the post-1996 MMP environment the two major parties compete to be the dominant partner in multi-party coalition governments, and a plethora of smaller political parties from all across the political spectrum (referred to in New Zealand as minor Claire Robinson Visual Bias in a Multi-party Electoral Context 3 parties) jostle for third party or coalition partner status. On average 28.8% of New Zealand voters have cast their party vote (the determinant of party proportionality) for a minor party each election since the introduction of MMP1. While the financial costs of entry for new and emerging political parties is low, minor parties receive only a small proportion of the state funding allocated for election broadcasting relative to the two major parties, and consequently rely heavily on the news media to cover their election messages. With data from the New Zealand Election Study showing that over 50% of some party voters in New Zealand wait until the election campaign to make their voting decision (see Chart 1), and advance voting becoming increasingly common2, the consequence of media bias in the campaign period, even if it might only be ‘structural’, is significant. Chart 1: Average Time of Vote Decision over 5 elections: 1999-2011 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 A long 'me ago In elec'on year but before elec'on campaign During the elec'on campaign Maori 42.6 18.6 38.8 Labour 40.7 18.7 40.7 Na'onal 40.4 22.3 37.4 NZ First 27.4 15.1 57.5 Greens 26.3 16.7 56.9 ACT 20.6 18.4 61 Major parties: National and Labour, Minor parties: Maori, NZ First, Greens, Act Source: New Zealand Election Study data retrieved from http://www.elections.org.nz Visibility Not only is this study different because it is from the antipodes, but it is specifically concerned with visual bias in press coverage of political leaders. Despite it being over 30 years since Doris Graber (1984) argued for greater study of news visuals, the visual dimension is still excluded from most studies of media bias (Caple and Bednarek 2013, Groeling 2013). When visibility is studied in the context of bias Claire Robinson Visual Bias in a Multi-party Electoral Context 4 research, it is more commonly measured in words than in pictures, including the length of TV sound bites or mentions in sentences and the order of news stories. Because visual images are polysemic they are harder to measure and assign agreed meaning to than words. But this does not render them less valid as objects of study. Indeed, to study visibility without studying “that which can be seen” (Thompson 2011:56) is to ignore a critical carrier of political meaning. Still portraits of political leaders were originally introduced to newspapers to illustrate stories when the word was considered to be the primary container of ‘objective’ political meaning. Today, supported by and supporting the increased personalization of politics, photographic images frequently accompany a written story about a political leader, in some cases take more column space than the written story, and often lead the story. In this environment the photographic image of a political leader is so much more than a candidate’s portrait. It is now fundamental to the exercise and acceptance of the broader political offering (Robinson 2012a). As news is increasingly consumed online, where photos and headlines drive clicks through to written stories, the leader image only becomes more rather than less important. Studies have confirmed that people, particularly the time poor and those with low interest in politics, use images as heuristics to evaluate leadership characteristics such as competence and trustworthiness, which then carry forward to political judgments, choices and voting decisions (Banducci 2002; Ballew and Todorov 2007; Bean 1992; Bean and Mughan 1989; Capelos 2010; Hall et al. 2009, Leathers and Eaves 2008; Lenz and Lawson 2011; McAllister and Bean 2006; Miller et al. 1986; Olivola and Todorov 2010; Riggio and Riggio 2010). The potency of leader images lies in the fact that they contain images of people. As social beings hard wired to pay attention to and be interested in other people, particularly their faces, humans are instinctively programmed to interpret nonverbal cues and translate them into meaning (Adler et al.